Estate of the art

How Westway Project is brightening up the area

Above: Colville School mosaic

Dotted around Notting Hill are an ever-increasing number of murals, mosaics and other decorative details. Gradually and subtly they are improving the landscape, interrupting swathes of concrete with colourful, patterned panels that are designed to make people feel better about where they live. And they’re all thanks to dedicated local organisation
Westway Project.
For over 10 years Westway Project has been designing and creating little pockets of art devised to break up the harsh urban landscape. Often it’s schools, estates and bridges that are the saddest victims of the town planners’ most brutal concrete schemes, prone to dark pockets of unlit and unloved areas that breed crime. The footbridge over the railway between Acklam Road and Tavistock Crescent was a recent success: new colourful panels and a painted section of the floyover above make it a far less threatening spot than it was before Westway Project approached it. Similarly, the railway bridge on Portobello Road
is now adorned with colourful panels, eliminating the old damp, dripping walls that invited graffiti and flyposting.
Council figures show that the borough’s worst crime hotspots are outside Ladbroke Grove and Latimer Road tubes, so next up for improvement by the Westway Project is the railway bridge on Ladbroke Grove, a dark, damp and unappealing area that has already been vastly improved by the project’s first phase, simply painting the underside white. By the end of June the bridge will be covered in colourful easy-clean graffiti-proof panels.
The organisation was set up in 1996 by local artist Miles Watson with the task of painting the flyover. Since then it has adorned the patch with around 15 mosaics and various painted murals, and lit the stretch of the Westway along Acklam Road. Most of the projects are designed by people living in the areas they decorate, with schoolchildren directly involved in designing and decorating mosaics.
A mosaic in Wornington Green was designed by a group of young muslim women, usually a group that’s seen as hard to reach, but their enthusiasm led to a large mosaic on the theme of symbols, near the Ladbroke Grove entrance to Wornington Green.
On the Swinbrook Estate, the tunnels under the barrier block on Acklam Road have been mosaiced, while Golborne Road is home to two mosaics destined originally for Wornington Green but relocated when plans to demolish the estate were announced. Many local schools now have their own mosaic, made by the pupils themselves, who are taking great pride in seeing their own work on the walls.
Westway Project is a charity and funding is sought project by project. The Ladbroke Grove bridge is funded by Transport for London but the smaller projects prove harder to fund. Some money comes from the council and from regeneration budgets, while other cash comes
from local charities and businesses.
“It’s very hard to measure how people feel more comfortable when their environment is improved,” says the organisation’s Dez O’Neill, “and we are always interested in feedback.” So, if you have any feelings about the footbridge, or Portobello railway bridge, or any of the mosaics or murals, please do get in touch with Westway Project – or tell us at The Hill. And if any local businesses are interested in sponsoring the organisation’s improvements to the environment, they’d be more than happy. Next up are Thorpe Close and Tavistock Gardens, so get in touch.

www.westwayproject.com